


forget-me-not

by starryskies55



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Amnesia, Fluff, Gen, Memory Loss, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-09-05
Packaged: 2017-12-23 12:17:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starryskies55/pseuds/starryskies55
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Memories are all we really own. (Elias Lieberman)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Waking

It was black.

This didn’t unduly bother me- well, as long as there wasn’t some scary monster lurking in the darkness.

I tried turning my head, looking for light or a scary monster, but I couldn’t move.

This bothered me slightly more than it being black. I had no chance if I couldn’t run away. I mean jeez. Give me a fighting chance.

AHA! LIGHT!

Okay, attempt to follow the light.

Wait- scratch that. Do I really want to follow the light? It sounds a bit death-y.

The white light was getting bigger and bigger, chasing away the shadows. I don’t really have a choice. The light was coming to me. Fine, but if I see an old guy with a sickle I am running.

Ahh, very bright. I squinted and blinked, and the blurry shapes that were forming solidified into an old woman peering at me over the top of her glasses. She wore a red cross on the front of her white apron, and her blue dress was pale and starched. I looked around. I was in a long white hospital ward, surrounded by sleeping patients who were all covered with the same pastel blankets I had.

Mungo’s. The word popped into my head.

The Healer glanced down at her clipboard and beckoned a younger woman over. “We’ve got a live one!” the older nurse called, her voice croaky.

That sounds promising.

The younger woman had a massive grin on her face, and produced her own clipboard. She wore dark blue scrubs, as opposed to the World War One-style the other Healer seemed to be sporting. Really, older witches need to get with the times.

“Hello,” she said softly. The rustle of my blankets was the loudest thing in the deathly silent ward. “I’m Bessie.”

“Hey,” I said, my own voice hoarse from lack of use. She passed me a paper cup of water and helped me to sit up. “Now,” she said, “I expect that you will be a bit disoriented, but you need to answer a few questions for me please.”

“Sure,” I said, taking a sip of water.

She ran a quill down her clipboard. “Who is the Minister for Magic?”

“Oh Merlin, I’ve got no idea,” I said. Politics? What self-respecting teenager keeps up with politics?

“I’m not supposed to help you,” Bessie whispered conspiratorially, “but it’s Draco Malfoy.”

“That’s the bloke,” I said, trying not to sound like a total idiot. I’ve never heard of the guy before in my life.

Bessie treated me with a smile. “How many fingers am I holding up?” she asked, holding up two fingers.

“Two.”

“Well done, and... now?”

“Four and a thumb.”

She smiled again. “You’re a sharp one.”

Yeah, like a butter knife.

“Do you know where you are?” she asked.

“Hospital.”

“Correct. Do you know why you’re here?”

I thought, scrunching up my nose. “No, I can’t-”

“That’s okay,” she interrupted, sympathetically patting my hand. “Many people forget the actual accident, it’s very common. Could you identify your wand?”

She showed me three different wands, and I picked mine out without hesitation. “Aspen and unicorn hair, nine inches,” I told Bessie, a hint of pride colouring my voice.

She rolled her eyes. “Mine’s wood, that’s all I know. Oh Merlin, I’ve done all these questions in the wrong order,” she sighed. “What’s your name?”

I opened my mouth, expecting the answer to spring to my lips, but it didn’t. I swallowed. I opened my mouth again- but nothing.

“I... I don’t know that either.”

Bessie’s smile had gone. “I’ll be right back,” she said, but she looked worried.

She conversed with the old Healer, and was on the point of returning when the door to the ward opened and a horde of gingers poured in, screaming out “MOLLY!”

Poor Molly. Whoever she is, she has a massive family, and they all look insane.

I saw the old Healer take aside two of the adults, a balding ginger man with hornbeam glasses and a woman with long blonde hair. The woman’s hands went to her mouth, and she glanced at me, her eyes wide with shock. The man took off his glasses to polish them, his hands shaking.

What had I done?

The ginger clan were swarming towards me, but a few of the other adults had heard what the Healer had said, and started to usher them back out. Their protests filled the ward and one girl locked eyes with me. “Molly?” she mouthed, but I looked at her blankly.

And then there were just the sleeping patients, the Healer and the two adults. The woman walked over to me, and I sat up straighter, smoothing back my hair.

“Do you...” she began, but her voice cracked. “Do you know who I am?” she asked quietly.

I shook my head slowly. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t.”

She let out a horrible, heart-wrenching cry and the man clasped her to his chest, his eyes questioning over the top of her head.

But I had to shake my head again. “I’m sorry,” I breathed. “I’m so, so sorry.”

A tear leaked from the corner of his eye. “It’s not your fault.”

From outside the ward, I heard a girl’s voice, loud and insistent. “She doesn’t know me! Molly doesn’t know her own sister!”

 

-

 

_My name is Molly Weasley (the second)._  
My mother is Audrey and my dad is Percy. I have a little sister called Lucy.  
I am in my last year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry- it’s now the summer holidays.  
I’m in Ravenclaw. I’m going to be Head Girl when I go back, and also captain of the Quidditch team; I play Seeker. 

It was my first night at home, and the whole family was coming over for dinner. I could put names to most faces now, as while I was in St. Mungo’s they visited me so I could get to re-know everyone.

I would probably be able to fake recognition if I didn’t have the biggest family in existence.

I was in the tiny sitting room while everyone bustled around in the kitchen, cooking and chatting loudly. I wasn’t hiding.

Okay, I was. But you aren’t in a house with twenty-plus strangers.

I looked over what I had written. My Healer had said that when it got too much, to focus on what I knew, and to build up from that. With a sigh, I put my quill to the paper again and wrote; _I was involved in an accident with a bus a month ago, and I don’t remember anything before I woke up two weeks ago._

That was a lie. I could remember something- a boy’s face, smiling as I pulled him, running, his palm warm in mine. It was night time, and I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of my own laughter.

But nothing I had been told about my accident tallied with that memory. Maybe it was fake, something that I had made up because I didn’t remember? But I can see the guy’s face so clearly.

I jumped as a tall black-haired teenager walked in without knocking, chuckling quietly. “Oh Merlin, sorry Molly, I didn’t realise you were in here- Uncle George wants me to get the Exploding Snap cards so he can beat me, but he’s got no chance! I _own_ at Exploding Snap!”

I think it was James, one of my many cousins, but he was talking to me like I was the old Molly, the one who knew that he owned at Exploding Snap. He looked at me properly, and I covered what I had been writing, embarrassed.

“Have you been drawing?” he asked, smiling.

I looked at him nonplussed. “Drawing?”

“You- I mean, Molly was brilliant at drawing.”

Now he was talking to me like I was an imposter in his family. I don’t know which one hurt more.

“We were really close,” he said suddenly, as he bent to get the cards out of a drawer in the coffee table. “You and me. We weren’t in the same House, but we’re in the same year.”

I didn’t know what I should say.

“They think you tried to kill yourself,” James said. He shuffled the cards uneasily.

_“Kill myself?”_ I spluttered.

“Why else were you in the middle of the road in the middle of the night?” he asked.

_“In the middle of the night?”_

I was beginning to sound like a parrot.

“You didn’t know?” he said, looking at me questioningly.

I shook my head. “No... no, I didn’t.”

He looked worried. “Should I have told you?”

“I’m glad you did.”

“I don’t know why nobody told you,” he said, running a hand through his hair. The action was strangely familiar. “Maybe it just slipped Auntie Audrey’s mind?”

“Probably. Don’t worry about it,” I said, forcing a smile.

James went to leave. “Dinner will be about twenty minutes,” he said, pausing at the door. “And maybe, if you remember something, you could draw it?”

I waited until he had closed the door before I flicked on the main light and picked up the quill again, dipping it back into the inkwell.

The point glistened with the wet ink as I poised it over the paper.

And his face swam before my eyes.


	2. Learning

“Lucy?” I knocked softly on what I was pretty sure was her door, but the dark corridor was unfamiliar and unwelcoming. There wasn’t a reply, but I pushed it open anyway.

“What?” Lucy snapped, her eyes red-rimmed as I poked my head around the door.

Something clicked in my head, but I bit back the angry retort which instantly rose to mind. Instead, I said; “I can’t work the shower.”

Something was missing from my sentence, the ‘I don’t know how’ but Lucy overlooked it and I followed her to the bathroom. She twiddled a few knobs and water spat out the showerhead.

I murmured my thanks, and she left with a shrug.

She was angry with me, just like Audrey was sad and Percy was disappointed. They were already making plans for me not to go back to Hogwarts if my memory didn’t come back. Just to prove that I could do it, I flicked my wand at the curtains, opening and shutting them as I waited for the water to run hot. They swung closed just as I heard a shout.

“SHE DOESN’T WANT TO SEE YOU!” Percy yelled.

A guy’s voice started to say something, but he was cut off by the slamming of the front door. He started to hammer on the door, calling out to Percy. I was torn. Do I look out the window? Someone knocked on the bathroom door. I opened it, and Audrey stood outside. Her glance went from me to the window, and then she smiled.

“Is everything okay?” I asked. It clearly wasn’t, but I didn’t know how to talk to this stranger.

“Everything’s fine,” she said, but her smile wobbled. “But I just bought you some of your favourite shampoo, and I forgot to put it in the shower for you.”

She was acting like nothing was happening downstairs. She was stopping me from looking.

“Thanks,” I said, and took the purple bottle from her, meeting her smile with an equally fake one of my own. She lingered a moment more, and then went downstairs. I shut the door and dashed over to the window, but everything was silent, and no-one was out on the street.

-

The next morning, I woke up early, and went downstairs. Percy was leaning against the fridge, and handed me a cup of hot chocolate.

“You always have hot chocolate in the morning,” he said, smiling, and I saw that the lines in his face creased when he was happy, not sad.

“Who was that last night?” I asked nonchalantly, taking a sip, and the sweetness spread across my tongue.

“Salesman,” he said, equally suave, and he picked up his bag. “I’m off to work- your mother has gone shopping, she’ll be back before lunch and Lucy usually gets up at about ten in the holidays. Don’t answer the door to strangers and if the phone rings, just take a message.”

“You will be okay on your own?” he asked, more reassuring himself than telling me.

I nodded. “I’ll be fine.”

I saw him out the door, and called; “Have a good day!”

His face lit up. “You too!”

By the time Lucy had come downstairs, the kitchen smelt like heaven. Finding a cookery book, I was making practically the entire chapter labelled; ‘Breakfasts’. First I had made pancakes, and then I felt bad that I ate them all, so I made another batch for when Lucy got up. And then a tiny part of me said that Lucy didn’t like pancakes, so I had cooked a proper English fry-up, put a pot of coffee on and made myself another hot chocolate.

“Mum is going to go mad,” Lucy said, standing in the door.

I looked up from the oven, where I’d put a packet of croissants. “Really?”

“Yes. You have made the biggest mess in the history of cooking!”

“But I made you pancakes,” I said, my voice small.

“I don’t like pancakes,” she spat.

“I thought you didn’t, so I also did you sausages and bacon and mushrooms and tomatoes and coffee and croissants,” I said triumphantly, gesturing at the oven.

“You remembered?” Lucy asked.

I stopped dead, oven mitts on my hands. “More of a feeling, than a remembering,” I said, my nose screwed up in thought.

She sat down and I served up, piling her plate high with food.

“I think I like this Molly better than the old Molly,” she said around a mouthful of toast.

“Why?”

“You’re not worrying. You were always stressing about grades, or being a prefect and Head Girl, and Quidditch captain,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“That’s only because I don’t have anything to worry about,” I said somewhat bitterly. “My head is as blank as a canvas.” I tried some humour, but it came out flat.

Lucy still smiled. “See? You’re funny too. You were getting better before the accident,” she mused, “You snuck out a bit- and you even got grounded- I don’t know why James used to like hanging around with you before this summer, you were such a square.”

“Yeah, well you’re a triangle,” I quipped, tipping some more bacon on her plate. “Now eat my mess up before Audrey kills me.”

“Why aren’t you calling her Mum?” she asked. “You were her favourite, you know, because you were just as clever as Dad or Auntie Hermione. I’m a Hufflepuff.”

“She doesn’t feel like my mum,” I said, sighing. “And who cares that you’re a Hufflepuff?”

“You did,” she said, looking down at her plate. “You used to tease me.”

“Then I was a bitch.”

“And you definitely never used to swear!”

“Better get used to it, because I’m a hardcore Ravenclaw-”

Lucy speared a mushroom on her fork and pointed it at me. “I just said I liked this new Molly- do not ruin it by attempting to rap.”

I held up my hands in mock-surrender. “Not the mushrooms, please!”

After a second of hesitation, she flicked it at me, so I launched a tomato at her and it splattered onto her pale yellow pyjamas. Her mouth opened in astonishment. Food-fights were clearly not a ‘Molly’ thing to do. She narrowed her eyes and threw a sausage at me. I got a spoon and started to toss the pancake batter at her, while ducking from an assault of toast crust.

“What is going on?” Audrey’s voice sounded harsh in the soft flurry of food.

Lucy dropped her toast and sat down, looking ashamed. It was a long shot, but I flicked a spoonful of batter across the kitchen, and it landed right on target- Audrey’s coat.

You could have heard a pin drop- and then she threw down her shopping, and started a barrage of fried tomatoes so hard I had to shelter behind the table while crying for mercy.

-

That evening we sat out in the back garden. It was early August and the humidity was making my hair frizzy. I was drawing, the same boy’s face that I could remember, but when Percy stopped behind me, I hid it and concentrated on a still life sketch of the lemonade glasses on the garden table in front of me.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “What are you going to do next?” he asked when I had finished.

“You?” I said, reaching for a clean piece of parchment while still covering my drawing.

Audrey looked up. “But you don’t like drawing people,” she said.

I cast my mind back to the drawings in my room- I couldn’t remember seeing any portraits. I looked up at Percy, wondering if I had done something un-Molly-like, but he smiled and took the seat opposite me.

“If you make me look too old then you won’t get your commission,” he said jokingly, and my mouth spread into my first genuine grin since coming home.

-

That night I dreamed about the guy from my memory.

I could feel my face aching from all the laughing, and the stars shone brightly in the night sky, joining in with my happiness.

I grabbed his hand, and pulled him down the street, and then danced out into the road. I saw his eyes widen-

-and then I woke up, the sensation of my hand in his still lingering.

There was banging on my bedroom door. “Get up now please!” called Audrey. “It’s Sunday- we’re going to the Burrow!”

I groaned and rolled over.

Someone up there hates me.

I managed to stick close to Lucy for a bit, and she helped me with names and faces, but when we sat down to a positive banquet she ended up the other side of the table and I was squashed in between James and Grandpa Weasley. Seeing that everyone called him that- even blonde twins who were no relation to us- it was fairly easy to slip into the habit. Unfortunately, Albus and Hugo seemed to delight in firing questions at me and seeing if I could answer them correctly. Or like the old Molly, at least.

I got them wrong more than right, and soon the adults stopped listening, until Lorcan yelled from the other end of the table; “WHAT’S MOLLY’S FAVOURITE BERTIE BOTT’S FLAVOUR?”

It took me a second, like always, to realise that Molly was me. I lifted my head from my mountainous plate of shepherd’s pie.

“Apple?” I said quickly. I hadn’t had one since I had woken up, but I was pretty sure it was right.

Halfway down the table, Lucy nodded. “That’s right,” she said, a smile on her face, but my stomach sank. It wasn’t right.

“I thought it was pineapple?” Lorcan said, and his twin backed him up.

“It is apple,” said James, next to me, and I smiled gratefully, but the other end of the table wasn’t having any of it.

Soon it was reaching World War Three proportions. Grandpa Weasley just let the arguing wash over him, Grandma Weasley was unsuccessfully trying to shut people up by hitting them with her mashed potato ladle and the rest of the adults were managing to shout over the debate.

I ducked out of the room, unseen.

-

Hiding seemed to be my thing recently. I sat outside on the front door step, watching the gnomes chase the chickens for no other reason than to watch them run about, flapping their wings helplessly.

It felt like a great metaphor for my life.

Uncle Ron sat down next to me, and I jumped. I hadn’t heard him come out.

“Grandma Weasley is going to want us to de-gnome the garden soon,” he said, stretching out his long legs.

“How do you do that?” I asked.

“You swing them around your head a couple of times, and then launch them into the next field. I find it’s very good for stress, especially when your Auntie Hermione gets a bit clever for me,” he said with a smile.

“That is a lie.”

He held up his hands. “Not a single word.”

“Fine,” I said challengingly. “Show me.”

He got up. “I bet I can throw them farther than you can!”

“What are you two doing?” Hermione said, about fifteen minutes later.

I was so surprised I dropped my gnome, but he sunk his tiny pointed teeth into my finger and Ron had to forcibly prise the vicious thing off my hand.

“Are you all right?” he gasped after I was free.

“No! That bloody hurt!” I said, looking around for the offender. He was sprinting to his gnome hole, but I easily caught him and his short legs paddled helplessly in the air as I drop-kicked him over the hedge.

“And don’t come back!” I yelled, panting. For a short little thing, it weighed the same as a bag of rocks.

I was suddenly conscious of a massive audience, who, after a second, burst into applause.

“She’s more of a Weasley than she was before!” I heard Uncle George cheer, and he high-fived me.

But Percy and Audrey looked more concerned than anything.


	3. Living

I woke up from the same dream with a start, the boy’s face imprinted on the back of my eyelids and his name dying on my lips.

The frustration I had managed to escape from came rushing back. I lay back onto my baby pink bedspread, angry again.

It wasn’t so much that I was upset, but Audrey and Percy made me feel like an imposter. I was Molly, and I wasn’t. I was different, I had changed, and what’s more, I liked this new me.

Differentiating between the old Molly and me was easier than trying to mould myself into a person I never knew. What Lucy and James and Uncle Ron had said about the old Molly sounded boring and annoying. She didn’t even sound like the sort of person I would tolerate.

But what made me angry was that people expected me to be the old Molly. Many things had changed with me while I was asleep –or maybe even before that- and I was now mercilessly judged when I had a different favourite flavour.

I couldn’t imagine what it must be like for my family, having to adjust to someone familiar and alien- but I was trying. I was going to the dinners, I was drawing, and I was trying.

It felt like they weren’t. I felt unwanted. Like an imposter.

I wanted to find someone who didn’t.

I buried my face in my pillow, and a tear leaked out of the corner of my eye.

I washed and dressed. The rain was beating down on the windows, matching my mood perfectly. I sat at my desk, waiting.

I was waiting for Percy to leave. I checked my alarm. Half past eight. He should leave right about- I heard the crack as he Disapparated to his desk job at the Ministry.

I waited a second longer, my heart thumping. “Pull yourself together Molly,” I told myself firmly.

“That’s right, dear,” the mirror agreed sleepily. “But things are always better after about nine o’clock, okay?”

I stuck my tongue out at it, a nervous act of defiance.

I tiptoed down the stairs, not wanting to wake up Lucy. I did not need any extra witnesses.

Despite all I was angry at, I felt like a guest in Audrey’s house. Being rude, or demanding, or even feeling the slightest bit angry with them felt ungrateful. It took all my self-control not to call them Mr and Mrs Weasley.

Audrey was in the kitchen, doing the washing up in yellow marigolds, staring out the window blankly. I clasped my paper tightly.

“Audrey?” I said tentatively.

“Yes dear?” she said. She saw my paper and smiled. “Have you been drawing?”

“Yeah...” I paused. “I remembered something, so I drew it, but I don’t know who this is.”

I turned the page so she could see.

Her reaction was instantaneous. The plate she was washing up fell from her hands and smashed, and the blood drained from her face.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“I- I- don’t know,” she stuttered. Her hands were shaking as she nervously smoothed out her apron. It was painfully obvious that she was lying.

“Please?” I asked.

Her eyes were wet with tears. “He’s not good for you, Molly,” she said.

“I just want to remember,” I pushed. “Please. You should let me decide what is right.”

“The last decision you made put you in a coma!” she choked out, but I could see that she instantly regretted it.

“I just want to remember,” I repeated. “I’ve lost so much of my life- let me find what I’m looking for.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath, and I internally cursed myself for asking at all. I should have waited, I should have asked Lucy or James, I should have gone out knocking on random doors until I-

“Leigh,” she said suddenly. “His name is Leigh. He’s a Muggle. You sneaked out at night to go see him, and you told him you were a witch. You brought him home to meet us, and you met his parents.”

She was crying, and I didn’t understand why. But I still stood there like a lemon, uselessly grasping my drawing.

“You were with him when the accident happened- you both ran out into the road but he was okay... he didn’t even need to go to hospital. When you didn’t remember anything, we thought we could keep you from ever being hurt by him again.”

I was stunned. Audrey was twisting a red and white chequered tea-towel between her fingers, tears streaking down her cheeks. I realised my own face was wet.

“I ran out into the road,” I said, my voice catching. “It was my fault. I dragged him across the road-”

As I said it, my hand stretched out as if he’d take it, but it dropped, empty, to my side.

Audrey gave a shaky smile through her tears. “It doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t have kept it from you.”

She opened her arms, and feeling like a little girl, I hugged her, and her hands rubbed my back as we both cried.

“Where does he live?” I asked finally, wiping my face.

“I’ll take you-” she began, but I cut her off.

“No- it doesn’t matter. I’ll find it.”

The rain was still pouring, a proper summer thunderstorm, and I ran without thinking, the paper in my hand becoming soggy and heavy.

I ended up in a street which I knew- and I didn’t. I pushed angrily at the barriers blocking my memory, but they stayed firm, just taunting me with the briefest flashes of recognition.

I felt like screaming.

The rain was freezing, and I had run out without a jacket. The torrents bounced off the pavement, stinging my bare legs and I was soaked to the skin. My hair was plastered to my skull and the rain mixed with my angry tears.

I couldn’t stand not remembering any more. I had lost my whole life.

Then, through the rain, I heard a voice. “Molls?”

I turned, and saw a figure running towards me, their coat over their head. “Molls?” they called again.

“Leigh?”

“Molls!” He reached me, and draped the coat around me. “Jesus, Molls, you’re freezing! What the hell are you doing out? And here? Your dad said you didn’t want to see me- look, after the accident I was going insane with worry, but of course you weren’t in any of our hospitals, and Percy wouldn’t let me see you, and I should have pulled you back...” He trailed off. “Molly?”

“Leigh...” I said again. He was exactly like I remembered.

The tousled dark hair, the ‘manly’ stubble he never could be arsed getting rid of, and the fire which danced in his eyes even as they looked at me, filled with concern. I lifted a hand to touch his cheek, and felt his cool skin under my wet fingers.

I realised I was staring. “It wasn’t your fault.”

He pushed his hair back from his face, and the rain made it stay slicked back. “I should have stopped you.”

“It still was entirely my fault,” I said, shaking my head. I was falling back into a familiar rapport. I felt forced and jerky at home, and this with Leigh felt so easy... and I had known him for all of two seconds. “And I’ve explained that to Audrey- I mean, I explained it to my mum. Listen, there is something you need to know-”

“You are okay?” he asked, suddenly concerned.

“Physically, yes-”

His eyes stopped me as they widened with terror. He gripped my hand. “Molly-” he said.

“Shush! Let me talk!” I snapped, putting a finger to his lips, but I was smiling. I hadn’t felt this way since... I hadn’t ever felt this way. Since I could remember, anyway. Pure happiness made me positively glow. “Leigh, I can’t remember anything that happened before I got hit by the bus.”

He winced at my frankness, but I was tired of tiptoeing around the gap where my memory used to be. It was like a great crevasse, swallowing my happiness up into the blackness. His face dropped as he registered what I said.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. Well, except me trying to pull you across the road as well. Good job I didn’t, or we’d both be screwed,” I said, trying to get him to grin with me.

He didn’t smile. “Will it come back?” Leigh’s voice was still coloured with concern.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“But you’re okay?” he asked again. “Because that bit is all that honestly matters,” he said, sounding relieved.

And I felt a weight lift from my mind. My memories didn’t come rushing back in one giant clichéd bundle, if that’s what you were thinking- but Leigh was accepting that I had changed. He didn’t care that I was different, that food fights and de-gnoming weren’t ‘Molly’ thing to do, and he didn’t mind that we had to get to know each other all over again- that I had lost my memories of us together didn’t matter to him.

He pulled me into a bone-crushing hug. “I was so goddamned worried.”

I nestled into his chest, and the rain carried on beating down. He was worried. He isn’t any more, I thought to myself happily. He loves me anyway.

...

The next summer, Leigh had finished his Muggle apprenticeship, and I finished my last year at Hogwarts- it was hard, but not impossible. We got a place together in York, where he started up his own carpentry business and I got a job as a junior reporter for the Prophet, managing to work from home most of the time.

We got married after he broke his leg, and proposed to me in the ambulance. The Muggle paramedic had to give Leigh extra painkillers after he started spouting about how he’d asked Percy and escaped without being hexed.

Two years later, we had our first child, and she was the most beautiful thing in the world- and we both made sure she was extra careful around roads.

I still don’t remember anything from the first seventeen years of my life.

But I don’t mind anymore, because I found what I was looking for.

**Author's Note:**

> this is cross posted on harrypotterfanfiction and also available as a podcast on harrypotterpodcast yaaaay.


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